A not-so-fond farewell
My firstborn son’s departure for college was the longest-shortest experience of my life. I had been preparing for this moment on some small level from the time he was in elementary school. When Ben was in first grade, we made the tough decision to advance him a year in his schooling. A bright student with a fall birthday, he was bored and advanced in a way that showed us pretty clearly that the best option was to have him skip second grade. So even from the time he was 8 years old, I began to mourn the school year we were sacrificing with him anticipated to start college one year earlier than he would have.
Little did we know then what his graduation year — 2020 — would hold in store. As the events of that spring began to unfold, it became increasingly evident he and we would lose the long-awaited experience of his high school graduation. No, a mother’s love and sorrow is not enough to set loose a global pandemic just to keep her son home an extra year, but that’s just what happened as Ben decided to complete his freshman year remotely. I savored that extra year, all while knowing it would pass too quickly.
This year, it was as if 2021 looked at 2020 and said I’ll see you enduring a pandemic, missing out on your son’s precious milestone and coming down with Covid, and raise you suffering a health scare, experiencing the sudden death of a close loved one and watching your eldest finally leave for college. In other words, it’s been a tough year that began with me going through my second breast cancer scare in three years, followed a month later by my husband losing his dad, and finally the moment I finally had to say goodbye to Ben.
I say it was the longest-shortest time because the leadup to Ben’s departure both came quickly and was so drawn out. Last year, when he decided at the last minute to stay home, I was relieved, yet sad for him. It was tough too because I’d already gone through the emotions of preparing to say goodbye, which only got waylaid. Nothing about the experience of parents with a child who graduated in 2020 has been normal, and missing out on those key passages like watching your kid walk across the stage and receive his diploma have been a deep loss for us. In part, it’s made the transitions all the more painful for me.
As Ben spent the year at home last year, he prepared me for his departure in his own way. Yes he was here physically some of the time, but I could tell that mentally he was ready to be on his own. The natural course had been disrupted.
Still, as we rounded the summer months, I could feel the freight train of his leaving bearing down. When the last weeks of August arrived, the anticipation of him leaving manifested as physical pain, the tears dammed up at the back of my throat and my stomach hurting at the thought of saying goodbye. The last week was the hardest. I would find myself sad at the smallest and strangest stimuli. Listening to “Candle in the Wind” on Spotify one day, I found myself tearing up at the injustice that “all the papers had to say was that Marilyn was found in the nude.” I began plumbing everything I heard and read for deep meaning. Lyrics from one of my favorite Bob Schneider songs: “It’s not the end of everything, it’s just the end of everything you know. Head versus heart equals bicycle versus a car.” The bicycle — it’s time for him to go — was no match for the car — I don’t want him to leave (ever).
A week or so before he left, we saw my sister-in-law and niece, who recounted how they always used to say Ben looked so concerned when he was a baby. It was such a trip because I remember that time, them saying that and the moment he was laid upon my chest the first day of his life as clearly as yesterday. In fact, in the days before he left, I thought about that a lot. How when he was a tiny infant, I used to place him in the bouncy seat in the bathroom with me while I showered. I cried a lot in the shower in those early days because of the surfeit of hormones released into my body and my genuine fear of taking care of this little person: What am I supposed to do with him all day? I thought. Now it had come full circle and I was crying in the shower again. What am I supposed to do without him?
The days leading up to Ben’s departure, everything was a gut punch as I tallied all the lasts. The last time I would see him come shirtless and disheveled into my room in the morning to say “hey” — my son of few words. Those final glimpses of his mop of coarse, unruly, blond curls. And perhaps the worst of all, the sight of his empty bedroom. Yes, I know he’ll be back, but this felt singularly permanent, the end of an era. And Kahlil Gibran, you can stop (posthumously) judging me with your pretty words and wisdom, OK? My child IS mine. No one else can have him.
When the day finally arrived, it was as bad and not as bad as I had imagined. I felt OK and even excited at some moments and others I thought I would break. When we arrived at the school, it suddenly all felt too big: the campus, the city, the transition, and I thought overwhelm would sweep me away. I cried more than I would have liked, and when the time came to give a final hug, it hurt, but on some level, I also knew we had done our job. He was strong enough to do this brave thing on his own.
When I came home that night and cried for the dozenth time, I retreated to the place I have turned to as my source of comfort so often during this time of the pandemic and unrest and challenge. I sat down in my chair and selected a guided meditation on the topic of grief from my Calm app. I don’t know what I have faith in anymore sometimes, but I do believe in the power of the universe, once in a while, giving us what we need when we need it most. As the practice closed, I heard the words I needed to hear (and made me cry for the 13th or 20th or 30th time). They come from a Mary Oliver poem: “To live in this world, you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.”
